Britain’s next prime minister Rishi Sunak has been congratulated by his father-in-law, billionaire businessman NR Narayana Murthy, as he is poised to become the first Indian-origin and third Tory leader to get the top job in three months.
Mr Sunak is married to Akshata Murthy and is the son-in-law of Mr Murthy, one of India’s wealthiest businessmen who is often hailed as the father of the country’s information technology (IT) boom.
“Congratulations to Rishi. We are proud of him and we wish him success. We are confident he will do his best for the people of the United Kingdom,” the co-founder of IT giant Infosys said in a statement on Tuesday.
Mr Sunak himself is the son of a pharmacist mother and GP father.
He attended the prestigious Stroud School in Hampshire and Winchester College and later studied politics, philosophy and economics at Lincoln College, Oxford.
He met his wife, Ms Murthy, while the two were studying at Stanford University in the US.
The couple married in 2009 and have two daughters.
On Monday, the former chancellor won an accelerated Tory leadership contest after rivals Penny Mordaunt and Boris Johnson dropped out of the race to replace Liz Truss at No 10.
He is believed to be the richest man in the House of Commons, with The Sunday Times rich list valuing his and his wife’s fortune at £730m.
The Murthy family found themselves in the news in 2020 after calls had emerged for the UK government’s ethics watchdog to investigate the then-chancellor.
A story by The Guardian suggested Mr Sunak had not declared his wife’s multi-million dollar business portfolio in the official register of ministerial interests.
Earlier this year, Mr Sunak faced questions over his family’s financial affairs after it emerged that Ms Murthy pays no tax in the UK on her vast foreign earnings, potentially saving her millions of pounds.
Ms Murthy is an entrepreneur and Infosys is only one of her business investments.
The Independent had earlier reported that dividends from Infosys calculated from her stake in the company, of 0.93 per cent suggest the payments could have totalled around £11.6m in the past year.
Mr Sunak had lashed out at the “smear campaigns” against his family and said his wife is a private citizen.
